Today we're finding out that President Obama is widening his lead to 51%, and Willard is still stuck at 47%.

Since President Obama is winning by a bigger margin than GW Bush did, and Bush declared a "mandate," then using that same logic, couldn't Obama say the following, but with more conviction? Especially because a majority of voters agree with the president's tax policy as opposed to disagreeing with Bush's very, very unpopular ones:

Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman: Obama’s national lead over Romney continues to expand as votes keep on coming in. It’s now Obama 50.9%, Romney 47.4%. That’s a bigger (and more decisive) margin than Bush’s victory over John Kerry in 2004 (which was Bush 50.7% and Kerry 48.2%). What’s more, the president’s lead has grown to close to 3 points in Ohio, 4 points in Virginia and 6 points in Colorado. One doesn’t win Colorado by six points without winning swing voters; there isn’t a big-enough Democratic base to make that argument.

When all the votes are counted, could Mitt Romney really end up achieving perfect poetic justice by finishing with 47 percent of the national vote? Yup. Dave Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report says new votes in from Maryland put Romney at 47.56 percent. He predicts with certainty that with all of New York and California counted, Romney will end up below 47.5 percent of the vote.

Nate Silver has been mocked, insulted, and slurred by very angry, very humiliated, very small-minded, nasty conservatives, because he was right. The GOP and the truth haven't been getting along too well, and this was no exception. Republicans *coughKARLROVEcough* believed their own polls, they reside in their own bubble, and they've literally ignored facts and figures.

But none of that could change the truth, and none of that has fazed Nate the Great at FiveThirtyEight, who has even more to say. And that "more" includes President Obama likely extending his lead to a healthy three percent.

Initial accounts of last Tuesday’s presidential election contemplated what seemed to be a significant decline in turnout from 2008. Those reports may have been premature, at least in part. [...]

Even without these votes, turnout in the battleground states over all was generally near its 2008 levels. In contrast, it is down by about 9 percent in the other 40 states, based on ballots counted so far. Some of the shortfall will be made up in the coming days. In California, where most balloting is conducted by mail and where it can take weeks to certify the vote, about 3.4 million fewer votes than in 2008 have been reported so far.

As the rest of the votes come in from California, Mr. Obama could add about 700,000 more votes in his margin against Mr. Romney, assuming that the remaining votes are divided between the candidates in about the same proportions as the ones counted so far.

Those votes could be enough to push Mr. Obama’s margin of victory in the national popular vote, reported at 2.7 percent as of Monday morning, to slightly higher than 3 percent.

And just to rub snark to the GOP wound, here's a treat from my hilarious buddy Andy Cobb:

To the extent that his proclivities are of importance to you please substitute "dudes" for "chicks" in all dialogue: Mr. Silver is gay. But in the popular imagination he's suddenly become a heterosexual superhero--wonky, pragmatic, and able to steer through uncertain times. Suddenly girls wanna do him/men wanna be him. Good for him.

"Drunk Nate Silver" became a Twitter thing recently, which makes perfect sense. People intuitively know prophecy is a gift...and a burden. In the face of such relentless clarity he might well crave some oblivion--if you or I had to deal with that kind of insight we'd probably go straight to the bottle and get messy as Rasmussen.

So if the web wants to superimpose Charles Bukowski on Nate Silver, let it. I would personally rather fantasize that he's a booze-hungry skirt-chasing seer of visions than learn all that fucking math.

And cm'on, if you don't buy his book you're going to have a much harder time pretending you've read it: